Kenny Loggins

July 21, 1985

His formative years: Loggins began playing his older brother's guitar when he was a freshman in high school. At 18, he was writing original songs. When his band won a battle-of-the-bands contest, sponsored by a Los Angeles radio station, the group recorded two Loggins tunes, ''Let Me In'' and ''Floating Down the Stream on an Inflatable Rubber Raft.''

Early professional years: In 1969, Loggins took a job writing songs for ABC (one song per week for $100 a week). During this time he also toured with members of the Electric Prunes and had four of his songs (including ''House at Pooh Corner'') recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In 1970, Loggins met Jim Messina and recorded with him until 1976. The collaboration yielded several gold albums (selling more than 500,000 copies each), including Sittin' In, Loggins and Messina and Full Sail. Said Loggins of the era: ''I never took the success seriously. I thought the world was suffering temporary insanity.''

Coming into his own: Loggins' first solo album, Celebrate Me Home, was released in 1977 and eventually went platinum (more than a million copies sold), as did Nightwatch (1978) and Keep the Fire (1979).

Recent work: Loggins co-authored the title song for the Footloose movie soundtrack. Vox Humana is his latest solo album.